Heart of Obsidian

A pause. “Kaleb Krychek.” Bending her head after repeating his name in the same flat tone he’d given it, she picked up her Danish and bit in. When she stared at him, he echoed the action.

The taste was a violent insult to taste buds accustomed to flavorless nutrition bars and drinks designed to deliver the necessary calories and minerals, with the occasional bland meal thrown in to balance his diet, but he swallowed the bite he’d taken of the pastry, drinking some water to wash it down. Seemingly satisfied with that, the small woman on the other side of the table continued to eat her own Danish in neat, precise bites until the entire thing was gone.

Good. She’s eating.

She’d always had a slender and graceful body, as befit the dancer she’d been, but she no longer carried the supple muscle that screamed health regardless of low body weight. Her frame was now fragile, her shoulder bones protruding through the green T-shirt she continued to wear, her cheeks sunken. When he teleported the remainder of the tray onto the table, she stared at it with considering eyes before choosing a banana muffin.

Taking a butter knife from the tray, she cut the muffin in two and put half on his plate. “Thank you,” he said again and took a bite of the soft, too-sweet item to pacify her.

She ate her half of the muffin and drank most of her hot chocolate before speaking again. “Kaleb Krychek. That’s a long name.”

“You can call me Kaleb,” he said, and they were words he’d spoken to her before, when she hadn’t understood what he was, why she should run from him.

“I have your shell, Kaleb.”

He processed her words, could make no sense of them. “Do you?”

“It’s black and hard.”

“You’re talking about the mental shield I’ve put over you.” He finished his water. “It was necessary. Your mind was exposed.” Naked, vulnerable—a fact unacceptable to him on every level. “The obsidian shield conceals all trace of you from the Net.”

Open concern on her face, she whispered, “Are you exposed now?”

Her empathy didn’t surprise him; it was what had led to her torture. “No,” he said, “I have the capacity to maintain dual shields without problem.” He was the most powerful Psy in the Net, of that he had no doubt, his psychic strength enough to destroy the very fabric of their race—or to control it. As to which he chose to do . . . it depended on her.

If she demanded vengeance, he’d turn the world bloodred.

She reached for his abandoned muffin, cut off a piece, and ate it. “Can you see me?”

“Your thoughts are your own.” He hadn’t invaded her mind past that instant of contact required for the teleport.

Piercing intelligence again. “Does sharing your shell mean I can see your secrets?”

“No. You don’t want to see inside my mind.” It was a warning. “The rumor in the Net is that I can drive people insane.”

No terror, no fear, just unwavering attention that said she heard far more than he said. “Can you?”

“Yes.” He wanted to ask her what she saw when she looked at him, whether the nightmare was apparent to those midnight eyes. “Until they see phantoms and hear terrible voices, until they can no longer exist in the rational world and become broken facsimiles of who they once were.”

“Why?”

“Because I can.”





Chapter 4





SHE HEARD HIS answer, this man as unreadable as a cobra about to strike, his voice raising every tiny hair on her body, but she knew he wasn’t telling her all of it. The reason for her certainty, and for the inexplicable violence of emotion that drove her to strip away his icy facade, was not anything she could articulate. One fact, however, was suddenly crystalline in its clarity in this instant when she could think, could reason—she needed her abilities against the cold strength of him.

There was no other way she’d survive.

Unlike those who had kept her in a cage while they attempted to break her, the cardinal across from her wouldn’t be forced to a halt by the labyrinth. He’d dig, go deeper, drag her out of hiding with vicious determination. He would be ruthless in his pursuit, brutal in his purpose. Nothing and no one would stop him—least of all a Psy who had hobbled her greatest strength.

Drinking the rich, sweet liquid he’d given her in a gesture of care she knew had to be calculated to earn her trust, she—

The labyrinth twisted.